{"id":14712,"date":"2009-05-05T21:16:01","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T03:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=14712"},"modified":"2009-05-05T21:16:12","modified_gmt":"2009-05-06T03:16:12","slug":"i-wouldnt-want-to-belong-to-any-club-that-would-have-me-as-a-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/05\/05\/i-wouldnt-want-to-belong-to-any-club-that-would-have-me-as-a-member.html","title":{"rendered":"“I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member”"},"content":{"rendered":"

So said Groucho Marx. I wonder if he was posthumously baptized by the Mormons, as it now<\/a> turns out<\/a> (against the “rules,” but what are rules when salvation is on the line?) was done to Barack Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham — d. 1995, LDS baptized and endowed 2008.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of people up in arms about this. I am, perhaps, too insensitive over it, but I consider it, at worst, a rather rude act in bad taste — sort of like spreading false gossip about the dearly departed when they aren’t there to defend themselves.<\/p>\n

I mean, let’s look at the alternatives:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n
    Death is it. No afterlife. So, aside from the family members feeling cheesed off at someone spreading theological rumors about their departed one, no harm, no foul. <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  2. \n
    The Mormons are right. Okay, well, then, they’ve done her a favor. (cf. Pascal’s Wager<\/a>) <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  3. \n
    Doing this is casting some sort of evil spell on the departed that sucks them away from their richly deserved paradisaical afterlife into the LDS orbit. How wude! (This one’s sort of the opposite of Pascal’s Wager.) <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  4. \n
    The Mormons are wrong. Whatever heaven \/ nirvana \/ valhalla you’re headed for is where you go, no matter what gets thrown over the transom after you get there. Or whatever awaits individuals in the afterlife is so beyond any of the conventions, posthumous baptism is utterly irrelevant (I tend to think this latter is the case, but that’s just my gut hunch). In this case, again, no harm, no foul, aside from temporal irk of the survivors. <\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So, really, let the Mormons do their thing here. I really don’t believe it makes any difference to the departed (I plan to get quite the chuckle over it when my membership arrives in whatever passes for a mailbox wherever I’m going — right alongside all the other junk mail). And for the survivors here, it just shows that the Mormons don’t care what people think of them, and are just as autocratic in their treatment of the dead as they are said to be in their treatment of the living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So said Groucho Marx. I wonder if he was posthumously baptized by the Mormons, as it now turns out (against the “rules,” but what are rules when salvation is on the line?) was done to Barack Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham — d. 1995, LDS baptized and endowed 2008. There are plenty of people up … Continue reading ““I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11320,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/24\/certainly.html","url_meta":{"origin":14712,"position":0},"title":"Certainly …","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 24-Sep-07 7:36am","format":false,"excerpt":"A bit of perspective ... 1st Century: \"Certainly Gentiles have a place in the church as do all the baptized. The debate is currently about the appropriate limits of pastoral...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3718,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/05\/living_waters.html","url_meta":{"origin":14712,"position":1},"title":"Living waters","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 5-Apr-03 5:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"While I can appreciate the zeal that Army chaplain Josh Llano brings to his job, I'm not sure that blackmailing the troops in Iraq into being baptized by hoarding water...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7642,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/23\/apologies_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":14712,"position":2},"title":"Apologies","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 23-Jan-05 8:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"After meeting for the week, the Episcopal Church bishops have apologized to the Anglican Communion for being so hasty about gay clergy etc. In this spirit of intentional practice, we...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14690,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/05\/04\/at-least-the-mormons-just-do-it-on-paper.html","url_meta":{"origin":14712,"position":3},"title":"At least the Mormons just do it on paper","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 4-May-09 1:38pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Bizarro story from Colorado Springs: Springs church, school clash over proselytizing - The Denver Post\u00a0 COLORADO SPRINGS \u2014 Representatives of a local Christian church tried to lure a seventh-grader at Russell Middle School into a church van last week, school district officials said. As a result, the principal sent students\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":722,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/11\/20\/i_am_doyces_dis.html","url_meta":{"origin":14712,"position":4},"title":"I am Doyce’s disease","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 20-Nov-01 5:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Or not. According to the Horrible Affliction Test ... Which reminds me ... I saw a fox trotting down the street as I departed Doyce & Jackie's the other night\/morning....","rel":"","context":"In "Personality Tests"","block_context":{"text":"Personality Tests","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/personality-tests"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":43688,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/19\/dealing-with-the-dearly-departed.html","url_meta":{"origin":14712,"position":5},"title":"Dealing with the Dearly Departed","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 19-Jul-14 11:38pm","format":false,"excerpt":"My good friend Mary ended up helping her new husband Stan deal with the estate of Stan's mom after her passing -- and, being that sort of person, distilled what she learned into some convenient checklists and bullet points (yay liberal arts education!). \u00a0I passed on an early version of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}